Athlete of the Week: Oceana’s Lara Scanziani-Grijalvo

A year later, the shock and awe of “Hill Day” proved to serve Scanziani-Grijalvo well, as the sophomore earned her first career individual cross-country championship with a first-place finish at the Peninsula Athletic League No. 1 meet last Wednesday at Half Moon Bay. Scanziani-Grijalvo is Daily Journal Athlete of the Week after topping the field with a time of 14 minutes, 33 seconds, passing second-place finisher Katherine Lorenz of Menlo-Atherton on the revered 45-degree incline of “Cougar Hill” en route to claiming the win.

“I was so happy because I remember other races last year,” Scanziani-Grijalvo said, “and there would be the other girls that would come in first and I would look up to her so much. So, I was just so very, very happy.”

It was a contentious race, though, that saw Lorenz closing on Scanziani-Grijalvo down the stretch. Running in first place was a strange experience for the Oceana sophomore, who had never finished better than fifth place in her varsity career.

“Yeah, it was because I was in the lead with the last three-quarters of a mile left … and I was just so sure somebody was going to pass me and I was going to get second,” Scanziani-Grijalvo said. “So, it was just very, very surprised.”

If Lorenz would have had 100 more feet, she probably would have chased down Scanziani-Grijalvo, who was candidly critical of her own sprinting abilities. It’s something to work on, for sure. In the meantime, however, the discipline of running one of the hilliest practice courses in the PAL at her home campus has seen her become quite a Shark in attacking competitive inclines.

“She’s got a target on her back now,” Oceana head coach Jed Thompson said. “She’s going to have those girls hunting her down the next couple races … but I think she’ll be fine.”

At 5-2, and rail thin, Scanziani-Grijalvo owns a classic cross-country physique. And she comes from a running background. Her mother, Ana, a native of Madrid, Spain, is a distance runner, and Scanziani-Grijalvo grew up admiring her work ethic, that included regular half-marathons and marathons.

Running isn’t the only discipline Scanziani-Grijalvo picked up from her mother. Not only is Ana from Spain, Scanziani-Grijalvo’s father is a native of Rome, Italy. As a result, Scanziani-Grijalvo grew up in a tri-lingual household, with each language coming as naturally to her as the others.

Still, the running lifestyle is where Scanziani-Grijalvo derives her most profound sense of identity, something she seized on after relocating from her native San Diego to the coastal oasis of Pacifica in the fourth grade. This is when precisely when she started running competitively.

“I thought running was so cool, I had to constantly tell everybody how much I liked being a runner,” Scanziani-Grijalvo said.

Yet, Scanziani-Grijalvo’s coach says the sophomore confidence is still a work in progress. Thompson is in his first year as Oceana’s head coach, so he wasn’t around last season when she advanced to the CIF state cross-country meet after taking fifth place in the Central Coast Section Division IV finals.

While making the trip to Half Moon Bay last Wednesday, Thompson resorted to pumping up the doubtful sophomore, giving her his best “Rudy the Rabbit” speech.

“She was kind of playing herself down, so I was just pumping her up,” Thompson said. “She’s as strong as any of the girls’ runners I’ve ever seen but she’s the last to tell you that. She’s not a bragger.”

Even in victory, Scanziani-Grijalvo was reluctant to celebrate her win. Instead, her first reflex after crossing the finish line was to turn around and celebrate with Lorenz, as the two were immediately sharing high-fives for having executed such a thrilling finish to a competitive race, with the M-A senior finishing one second back with a time of 14:37.

And, in retrospect, Scanziani-Grijalvo was quick to give credit to that one day a week Oceana runners dread so much but proved a defining factor in her triumphant sophomore debut.

Said Scanziani-Grijalvo: “I think hills are our whole team’s strong suit.”